aimee's personal journey

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I can’t help but wonder what Six Apart/LJ staff are making of all this drama. Maybe they don’t care. Flooding the news posts doesn’t seem to have done any good. I think it’s pretty much just giving LJ more money because every time we reload, it loads up the Google ads. Are we still just a tiny little drop in the whole world of LJ? I don’t think i’ve ever seen the users quite this riled up, and yet, nobody at LJ is making any sort of attempt at a response. I know it’s the weekend and all, but you’d think someone would give a damn, wouldn’t you?

Heh, that post where burr86 made a stupid remark about six-year-olds having sex, prompting a surge of very angry people shouting back, got deleted. The moderator of the community didn’t appreciate the post being turned into a very hot flame-war. So of course, thousands of people wanted screenshots of the original comments, which some forward-thinking people had already thought to provide! Their servers promptly crashed as everyone went to have a look!

Then a news article appeared at firefox.org, got lots of linking … and then firefox.org went down!!! It’s back up now, i think.

A very good article has now appeared on darksiderainbow.net which explains the whole situation very well and very fully. The author really understands that it’s not about two people being deleted, and it’s not about whether or not the characters portrayed were underage. It’s about LiveJournal not having clear rules, acting suddenly and not explaining themselves, and ignoring literally thousands of pleas for clarification.

This is big. This is the most epic screw-up i’ve ever seen on LiveJournal. I’m just so glad i can sit over here and observe from a distance! :) Although i still have a presence on LJ because Liz kindly syndicated this blog for me: aimee_mychores.

I have made my closing post at LiveJournal. I have changed my profile page there to simply give a comment that i made in the news community earlier today:

LiveJournal, i loved you but i hate what you have become since Six Apart took over. I have just HAD ENOUGH. You’ve pushed me too far this time. I’m going it alone where i am free to post what i want without fear of idiotic censorship and such cruel insensitivity.

Happily, thanks to the wonders of RSS and OpenID (which is, by the way, one of the best inventions the Internet has ever seen – thank you Brad!) i will not miss LJ. I’m better off without you.

I’d tell you to sort out your priorities, but it seems clear that you have done that, and they are unfortunately not the kind of priorities that i wish to be associated with. So this is goodbye.

Ahhh, it feels so good. It’s like i’ve moved house, and now i’m able to settle into my luxurious new blog that is all my own.

The spam is still going on in the LJ news community. Two posts have already been filled up to their limit (5000 comments) and the next one only has 1000 comments to go. Still nothing from Six Apart. Except they did manage to make a joke about it in a completely separate post. Sickening behaviour.

Heh, this latest outbreak of drama has already been noted on Wikipedia:

On 3rd August 2007 the controversy reignited when two users’ journals were deleted due to posting of explicit fan art. In both cases LiveJournal claimed the artwork contain depictions of minors engaging in sexual situations. As of 4th August LiveJournal had not made a statement to its users, despite several thousand complaint posts being made on Livejournal’s News community

We also managed to break the LJ servers temporarily. There was at least half an hour, probably more, when we were getting databases all over the place. I would have laughed if that had lasted longer. This is starting to affect everyone, and just gives all the more reason for more people to up and leave.

In other news, i did manage to get out today. It’s amazingly beautiful weather today, far too good to stay indoors bitching at LiveJournal all day! My partner and i went out for a nice walk down to Sainsburys and back! :)

Over the last few years i have removed my dependency on Microsoft and Google, and i am now weaning myself off Yahoo and LiveJournal. I have embraced Linux, OpenSource, and now i’m finding the joy in doing it my own way! I have nothing particular against Yahoo, but i like the idea of being in control of my own email, not having emails stored on someone else’s server, so i will use mychores.co.uk as my primary email provider, as well as my personal blog.

This morning i have set up an account with Bloglines RSS aggregator, which is wonderful because it tracks my LJ friends, but also if any of my friends move to GreatestJournal or InsaneJournal or any of the others, i can keep up with them just as easily there, plus friends who host their own blogs independently.

Of course i have now just created a dependence on Bloglines – but at least it’s not Google Reader! Maybe i’ll find an RSS aggregator that i can download and run myself, or maybe i’ll write my own!

Oh, the barbecue was really good fun last night! Not as many people went from Development as i had hoped, but we had a good time, and it was really lovely to meet people’s partners. The food was good, even if a little lacking in stuff for vegetarians to eat. No, i’m not complaining; i ate plenty of bread, salad and potatoes, and it was very nice.